The highest budget team I know of is 5727 Omegabytes from NC with upwards of $250k a year. Does anyone know of any teams with higher ones? I’m sure they’re out there
(incoming 359 post, and justified explanation from Glenn)
1622 should also be pretty far up there, regularly doing 4+ regionals pre-covid, but I’m less familiar with what they have going on.
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There are some high sponsorship teams out there, but they don’t have obligation to make themselves known. Wouldn’t be surprised if most stay silent.
Money isn’t everything, ex. when we were running 225 in the late 2010’s we operated on $30-40k/year depending on that year’s sponsorship. Enough to stay competitive and nothing more.
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Cries in my team almost being out of money 🥲
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Can confirm, 330 hovered around that range for most of the last decade. Towards the end, smaller teams made everything cheaper, especially with travel.
Also means we barely did any outreach buuuutttt
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What do you even do with that much money?
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There’s a massive amount of funds teams allocate for travel and lodging expenses. (Among all sorts of other operating expenses)
Operating budgets don’t mean robot budgets.
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Salary for coaches?
Retail space.
Machines.
Larger robot part budget.
Travel accomodations for more people.
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Hey Slice!
We pulled in less than 15k this year, gross income is by no means an outright metric for success.
However, I will say that teams with that much funding are more likely to grow and perform more consistently well each year. Peak success, however, is not necessarily determined by financing… above a certain point.
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Also idk pretty sure robonauts makes bank
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You don’t need a large budget to build great robots (although money can help)
By far the biggest parts of our budget are entry fees and travel.
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I would not be surprised if Madtown had over 1M a year - their mentor (owner of WCP) donates a very sizeable portion to the team every year as far as I know.
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Watching the 5727 reveal doesn’t scream totally loaded to me. Unless the building is entirely theirs and then it must be the data room taking up all the capital.
To that effect buildings can be costly. We are grateful for the space the school gave us after developing a stronger relationship with them over several years and having the opportunity when space the city had graciously hosted us in for a decade sold.
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Our team spends 60-80k a year, most of which goes to travel, registration, and covering away comp costs for mentors and chaperones - only about 20-25k actually goes to robot parts, tool purchases, etc.
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I was told back in the early days of our existence we used to get 150k from Xerox. Nowadays they spread that around to dozens of teams and we get something like 25k. We had to make some tough financial decisions and I myself purchase the button making tools and supplies so the kids can make our giveaways at events. You do the best you can with what you got.
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Budget can be broken down to
- robot build: parts, tools
- Off season training supplies
- build space: space, utilities, etc. This might be hidden if you are building on school property but they are real
- Travel
- Outreach
- Team Image: i.e. teeshirts, website
- Registration fees
- Overhead: i.e. Maintaining your 501c if you have one.
So you are not including all that in your budget, you are not looking at an apples to apples comparison.
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Are there not teams that are tied to schools and have teachers and classes given to them? Teams where robotics is considered an extracurricular like band or football? I would think there’s a lot of hidden value given to those teams beyond direct dollars.
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This question really needs to clarify budget for what?
Some programs intermingle between frc and other program costs making apples to allles comparisons difficult. Some teams also have much higher costs for goods or extenuating situations making long distance travel required.
There’s a lot of different situations so while some teams may state a budget in the 10-15k region and others 10x that there are usually a lot of factors going into that.
Just a thing to keep in mind.
Our budget is about 7-8k including everything. It’s very tight, but we make it work. Being in a district model is very helpful, but we definitely disassemble the previous year’s robot to recover screws and washers.
I would love to see funding factored into the award process. Or maybe an award like rookie all-star that recognizes the highest seed with least funds.
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What would this accomplish?
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